Refresher
by Wonderland126
Summary: Hey this is my first fic so please be gentle. I suck at summaries so there is none. You can be surprised! R


"Ugh that hurt like hell," The small kid grumbled, rubbing his bruised and bloodied head. He unlocked the door and stepped into his little apartment. Bare walls and sparse furniture greeted him as he threw down his keys and took off his shirt gingerly. The blonde cringed as he accessed the damage of his latest beating. His bare stomach and chest were decorated in many injuries, both new and old. The newest additions were a couple of quickly forming and nasty looking bruises, multiple cuts that were still slightly bleeding, and similar wounds on his back. Tweek sighed and looked at the clock that hung above the lone couch in his living room. He had an hour before his shift down at Rusty's, an older convenience store that was located in more of the 'bad' side of South Park. The place was located close to Tweek's apartment and the pay was decent, plus the owner would let him have coffee at a discount, so the insomniac found the job pretty ok. He worked the late shift which was 6:00 p.m to 2:00 a.m. weekdays and weekends.

Tweek decided he might as well get all of the blood off of himself and smell somewhat decent, so he took a shower. The amount of blood that flowed on the shower floor made the fragile teen slightly light headed and dizzy, but he got a hold of himself and stepped out from the warm shower into the cool air of the bathroom. His normally crazy blonde hair hung down to his shoulders in soaked locks. As soon as he towel dried it though, it was back to sticking up and being unruly. Tweek rolled his eyes and slipped into a clean uniform and a watch before going into his kitchen and making a fresh brew of liquid bliss. He capped his giant thermos of coffee and grabbed his jacket and keys, before running out the door, realizing he only had ten minutes to make the twenty minute walk over to his part time job. He jogged quickly down the length of his road and made a sharp left onto Main Street. The blonde's body ached from the abuse he had suffered earlier that day, but he ignored the pain the best he could as he booked it down the mostly empty sidewalk. He almost fell on the ice slicked surface as he turned right and looked down at his wristwatch.

5:57

He had three minutes and started to sprint even harder. Even though Tweek might not have looked it, he was pretty quick when it came to running.

The small boy rushed into the store and clocked in with a minute to spare.

"You okay, kid?" A voice asked the panting blonde. Tweek looked over and saw his older co worker, the owner's son, Sam looking at him with concern.

"I'm f-fine," Tweek said dismissively and took a swig of his coffee to calm himself down. "You can go home now. I'm sure it was an l-long day."

"Meh," Sam responded and shrugged his muscular shoulders. As he walked past Tweek, he patted his shoulder. "You're a good kid. Make sure once you graduate, you leave this shit hole town and never look back. God knows I would do anything to be able to do that." With that, Sam walked out the door to leave Tweek to his shift.

"Don't have to t-tell me twice," The insomniac mumbled to himself and cursed his stuttering. It was bad enough that he was constantly shaking, let alone stuttering like an idiot. At least he had managed to remove those weird noises from his vocabulary a few months prior. The blond had decided to stop the stuttering next and then the shaking, maybe even his hair pulling, but that was always unintentional. How do you stop something that you aren't even aware of doing most of the time?

He was doing pretty well with the current task, though. Now he only did it once or twice a sentence; the poor kid used to do it almost every word.

Tweek's thoughts were interrupted as he heard the tiny bell above the door ring, signaling a customer. He looked over and his blood turned to ice in his veins.

_You have _got _to be _shitting _me!_

One of his main tormenters, Clyde Donovan, was over grabbing an energy drink from the drink shelves. Clyde didn't notice his victim and turned to his companion who was over by the chips.

"Hey, Craig." The taller boy turned to look at the one addressing him, wearing a mask of indifference. Clyde tossed the Monster to Craig and he caught it effortlessly in one hand. "Can you pay for that? I'll go wait out in the car."

"Whatever," The raven haired teen responded. As Clyde turned to leave, Tweek squeaked and hid under the counter so that the bully wouldn't see the tiny blonde. When the tell tale twinkle of the bell rang, and he could only hear Craig's movements, he stood up slowly and breathed a quiet sigh of relief. The coffee addict almost jumped out of his skin though when he saw Craig standing right before the register, his items on the counter. Tweek scanned the various items quickly.

"Do you w- want a bag?"

"No." Tweek nodded.

"That'll be $4.32, please," Tweek said as he yanked the receipt out of the cash register. The expressionless teen handed him a five and told him to keep the change as he walked out the door. The blonde crouched down again as he heard the boys' car drive away. When he didn't hear the engine anymore, he stood up and took a long swig of paradise in a green thermos.

The rest of his shift was pretty slow and uneventful. The only thing that made him a little edgy though, was a group of about five men in all black. All of them were about 25-30 and the smallest guy was at least twice Tweek's size. They left about a half hour before the teen locked up for the night, but that didn't make the small kid feel that much better. It _was_ a pretty dangerous neighborhood after all. The damn streetlights were pretty dim too. He could get mugged and raped in total darkness. Fantastic.

Tweek slightly limped as he speed walked down the deserted streets, head down and coffee thermos held tight to his chest. It had been a Friday night so that meant that the twitchy kid had received his paycheck. It was stuffed in his sock to make sure that it couldn't be too easily stolen. It was straight cash, too; 'none of that check bullshit,' as his boss put it.

_Please God, let me get home in one piece. No incidents would be nice too… If you don't mind?_

Of course his day couldn't end on a normal note.

Tweek was almost upon the line that would divide bad and good South Park when he felt a large hand wrap around his skinny wrist, pulling him roughly into an alley. His cry of alarm was knocked right out of his lungs when something that felt suspiciously like a baseball bat smashed into his stomach. The teen doubled over in pain, dropping his thermos of pure bliss, and felt a coppery taste in his mouth. Laughter sounded all around him and the next thing he knew, he was suspended at least a foot off the ground by a handful of his chaotic hair. Tweek closed his eyes and ground his teeth together in an effort not to cry. He dug his nails into his captor's wrist, but for all the difference it made, he might as well not have done anything. The grip on his hair tightened and he felt himself being shook up and down. The coffee addict thought that his jaw might break from the intense pressure he was grinding his teeth with.

"Looks like we got a pretty boy tonight," The one holding him announced, his sour breath stinging the poor boy's nose. His shaking was in overdrive, which didn't really help his current position.

Suddenly the skinny teen was airborne. Hot pain shot through his cranium as he crashed head first into the grubby brick walls of the alley. He slid down and a dull ache resounded in his hips and back as it made contact with cement. Tweek opened his eyes and even though his vision was blurry, he could make out the five guys from earlier. They made a loose circle around him, the one he assumed was the leader standing to the right of his head. The guy was _huge_. At least three times the scrawny boy's size with hands the size of baseball mitts.

_Well shit_

Tweek noticed the one on his left hand the big guy the baseball bat that he had used earlier. The leader squatted down and grabbed him around the throat with one hand and held the bat above his eyes with the other.

"I saw you get paid," He hissed. "You give us that fucking money, or I'll fucking murder you. It'll be slow and _very_ painful."

The blond weighed his options for a moment. They would most likely kill him anyway; money or not. No one really cared for him anymore and nothing in his life held any meaning at all. His parents were dead, all his peers either couldn't care less or absolutely hated him, and he lived in a shitty apartment, working in a convenience store. Nothing to lose.

"_Go fuck yourself_," Tweek grumbled back.

Not a good move _at all._

As soon as the words left his mouth he felt that nice metal baseball bat connect with his right knee. An audible _crunch _resounded through the air and he screamed in pain.

_GOD__DAMMIT__! That was my _good _leg!_

"I'll ask you once more," The thug growled, his beady little eyes full of rage. He lifted Tweek up and pinned him against the wall by his throat. "_Give us the damn money_." When he failed to answer due to no oxygen, the guy kneed him in his broken knee. Tweek cried out in pure agony and felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. Every part of him hurt. All he wanted was to just die already. Couldn't these damn muscle heads accomplish that easily? Oh yeah, they were sadistic bastards. It would be a cold day in hell before they let him off that easy.

After the first punch to the face, everything was a haze of pain. Tweek blocked everything out and receded into the depths of his mind, like every time he was beaten down. He didn't know when it quite started, but it had started happening more and more recently. The boy would focus on a specific happy memory and relive it. He was completely oblivious to reality.

_It was a usual cold day in South Park. An eleven year old Tweek sat downstairs, drinking his favorite coffee blend and watching cartoons. His father was out at work and his mother was in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies. _

"_Come and get some, sweetheart!" Tweek's mom called. The little boy got up and quickly made his way over to the kitchen table, where Mrs. Tweak set down a pile of the delicious sweets. He dug into the chocolatey goodness. There wasn't a care in the world as he ate the snack and downed his hazel nut coffee. His mom rubbed his head and hummed a lullaby. When he was finished with it, he still sat at the table while his mom cleaned up the crumbs off of the table._

"_That was ngh d-delicious! T-thanks- gah! – mom," Tweek stumbled over his words as usual. His mom simply smiled at him._

"_You're welcome sweetheart," She responded and wiped gently at his face with a napkin. "Silly goose, you got crumbs all over your little face!"_

_Even though he thought himself old enough to be 'too old' to be treated as a mamma's boy, he still enjoyed being treated as such when no one else was around to see._

_Suddenly his mom grabbed his shoulders and her face was concerned. Her voice sounded like someone familiar when she spoke next… Manlier._

"_Dude can you hear me? Wake _up!"

With that, the blonde was wrenched out of his memories and back into the real world; the harsh, harsh reality.

A pair of bright blue eyes were mere inches from his own.


End file.
